On Sausage-Fest day Roy brought a Cheese-Bomb as a present, and which I should have photographed before digging into it. A lovely crumbly white Lancashire, wrapped in a spherical black wax container. A belated 'thank you' Roy. The cheese is delicious and, as you can see, it makes excellent cheese-on-toast.
Picture 2 is a hangover from our WoW day at Bakewell.As Helen told me, the water there is a favourite haunt for many different types of duck and gull and these three gulls looked so contented on their log.
Duck and Gull I'm afraid is more or less the sum total of my water-bird recognition knowledge.
As with swans, it is difficult to get the exposure right photographically. The camera averages out the scene in an effort to get it right overall, which so often results in detail in the whites being burnt out.
There are strategies, but I won't bore my non-photographer readership with them.
Y is over at Burton Joyce today and, as always, looking forward to seeing the children and I have had one of my messing-about days. Radio, newspapers, crossword, computer, pictures, magazines et al plus of course a lengthy afternoon nap which I have just risen from.
And if any of our recently surfaced grammarians tells me off, I shall spit. I know I ended the last sentence with a preposition and it should have been ".....from which I have just risen". As Churchill famously noted on a document which a civil servant had similarly corrected "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put".
I've just moved from laptop in the bedroom to PC in the Office because I fear eminent hard-disc failure in the former. The screen jumps about and flickers badly, the colours aren't stable and the picture looks as if it as about to vanish completely. Fortunately most of my stuff is online anyway and I have copied all National Trust documents to this computer already.
Our lecture at EPS this evening is "A Winters Tale" by Robert Falconer. I duly googled him and his lecture but, apart from being able to tell you that he delivered the same talk at Dronfield and Bolsover, I can help you no further. I do wish more photography lecturers would have websites. And before AnonymousRob tells me - I know that most of the more famous photographers do have their own website. They need to for commercial reasons.
Comments
bungus ...... May be I should have blogged about the front wall being vandalised but it has been piecemeal over a matter of months. It is a matter of editorial space. As Y often tells me, if I write too much people won't read it all anyway.
McAfee is simply my anti-virus security system. And I know that you know you have been cold. I was just mentioning the weather here as a matter of record.
AnonymousJBW ...... I feel sure that your recommended website for weather is a better one. But I use the one published for two reasons.
- I don't really want or need to know too much about the weather. I look out of the window generally.
- The one I published is a widget which fits conveniently on my igoogle homepage and was easy to clip with my Clipmarks.
Jill ...... Please see above re the wall. Over perhaps 3 months a group of drunken yobs on turning left having come down the footpath thought it fun to push over a segment of wall. The footpath isn't generally a problem. A group will congregate there, then grow up and we will have no trouble for a couple of years, then another group will start to congregate and so on.
I know Ham Common. I used to pass it on my way from Surbiton to Richmond Hill. My memory tells me there was a large house on the corner which was reputedly owned by Tommy Steele. The Restaurant sounds marvellous. No 'Incy Wincy' type banks of microwave ovens in their kitchen I wager. And no slot-machines or music. So often I am sure the music is more for the benefit of the bored staff than the customers. My feeling is of a niche market amongst older people who enjoy quiet places to eat home-cooked food, and it is up to owners to find it and cater for it.
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I have just returned from the Camera Club, and both lecturer and pictures were of a high quality. Perhaps he could have done with editing somewhat. From a lecturer's point of view it always seems to me that, if you show too many near-identical images, it saps strength from the others. I must stress that my 'lecturing' was not in photography and I simply make a general point.
No time to research a quotation tonight. Plus - I'm too tired.
"Sleep tight - catch you tomorrow"
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4 comments:
DIARY
Granddaughter Alex (18) now also has pleurisy. Sandra told her not to think of going to work but she says she has to go in tomorrow because there will be no-one else there to look after the children. I wonder who she takes after?
Tomorrow, Friday, evening we shall be in Eastwood, or is it Brinsley?
David at the Rocking Horse Bistro rang up Sandra having been somewhat let down by a party of ‘credit-crunched’ diners so we shall be eating and enjoying cabaret and quizzes at Durban House.
Don’t worry G, we shall not be descending on you as Sandra will have all on to see out the evening anyway!
BLOG COMMENT
Lancashire cheese does cook well. Yours looks delicious on toast. Enjoy!
Perhaps the answer to washing out the whites is to stick to snapping Black Swans. There are some at Horncastle I believe.
I noticed the clumsy grammar before you pointed it out yourself but decided against mentioning it as it was not TOO offensive. Now you have spoiled my good intention.
I suspect the suspected hard-disc failure is imminent rather than eminent but I shan’t bother mentioning that either.
If you are correct it seems to be happening very soon, which is bad luck.
I am rather surprised that I didn’t notice damage to your wall on the Day of the Sausages.
These things should be recorded.
I may be the only one but I always read it all. Don’t necessarily understand it all, but I read it all!
Right, I get it now; the weather reports are the equivalent of the response to the judge’s “Who are these Beatles?”
You are sort of proving the point I have just made about keeping a record.
Your comments to AnonymousJBW:
I understand and empathise with yourpoint (1) but point (2) leaves me Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered (I’m wild again, beguiled again, a simpering, whimpering, child again...)
A few saddles have survived and are still recognisable and fulfil their traditional purpose. Unless present trends are dramatically reversed I fear that pubs will fare less well.
Re the Ham Common Pub/Restaurant, I think you could be making romantic assumptions based on little real evidence. And if you are right, it sounds to me indeed like a niche market suited to affluent areas only.
My big worry is for ‘real’ pubs, especially those which were once the core of village or back-street life. (Other than in wealthy villages, general shops have already disappeared, as well as many Post Offices).
There must be a poem waiting to be written. Betjeman touched on something similar in several of his works and ‘The Village Inn’ is wholly devoted to bemoaning the insensitive transitions of the mid 20th century. But he was dealing with change, not demise.
AnonymousJBW:
I’ve looked at MetCheck. Next Tuesday looks good for a bus trip to Mansfield Specsavers.
AnonymousKevin:
You have my sympathy. Everything you say rings true.
As a career change, I took on the tenancy of a village pub from 1972 to 82 and, much as I enjoyed it, I have never felt a wish to return to that life.
When I went in, things like the juke box, pool table, bandit (and later Space Invaders) were the tenant’s choice and perks. But it wasn’t long before the brewery insisted upon use of their selected firms and a cut. And rents increased dramatically year by year (although that trend had started in the mid sixties).
Thanks, but no thanks.
Jill:
Your daughter’s pub appears to be one of the lucky ones bucking the trend, unless AnonymousKevin and myself have got it all wrong.
I understand that pubs throughout the country are closing at a rate of 5 a day (The current closure rate being some seven times faster than in 2006 and 14 times faster than in 2005). Every time I visit Newark, another seems to have closed. And one that I know fairly well (I am not a regular but have friends who are) was always busy and thriving last year but now gives an impression of struggling.
Can't wait to hear 'Fairy Tale of New York'.
You are right about daughter's pub, it is in an affluent area, though there is a very large social housing estate quite near but that has its own pub, apparently with loud music etc. and caters for the young.
You have got the right place. G, it is past Tommy Steele's residence, on towards the Ham Gate entrance into Richmond Park. It was a staging inn, on the way between Kingston and London, it's called the 'New Inn' with a date on it of 1684.....
Oh that cheese on toast does look good....
Strange happenings In the Brinsley area. I appear to have half of Nottinghamshire police force encamped outside my door, Radio Trent Knocked on the door and asked if I was prepared to make a statement of which I declined.
The fact I know nothing about what my neighbours have done seems to have no effect on them, so if anyone hears what's going on please inform me as I am totally in the dark, the reporter couldn't even tell me as they claimed the police was being “tight lipped”.
Kevin
This is from the Eastwood and Kimberley Advertiser website:
"Arrests in Nottingham over BNP list
Published Date: 05 December 2008
POLICE investigating the leak of the BNP membership list arrested two people in Brinsley last night.
Notts police worked with Dyfed-Powys police in Wales, who are in charge of the investigation.
A Dyfed-Powys police spokesperson said:"We can confirm that last night Nottinghamshire Police arrested two people as part of a joint investigation with Dyfed Powys Police and the Information Commissioner's Office in conjunction with alleged criminal offences under the Data Protection Act.
"The arrests followed an investigation into a complaint received about the unauthorised release of the BNP party membership list."
Thousands of members of the BNP had their confidential details leaked on the internet last month.
The document gave the party's entire membership list for 2007 - names, addresses, jobs, phone numbers - and in some cases, even the names of members' children.
While officers were searching the house they also came across a suspicious item and had to call out their bomb disposal team. The item was decalred safe and no further action was needed."
Are we to believe, from recent comments, that the true cause of the demise of the public house lies with money-grabbing breweries? I assume these are the same breweries that sell their products to large supermaket chains? In this area, it seems to me, there are a number of ex-pubs which are very large buildings and would need lots of people frequenting them on a frequent basis to make them viable. Today I went past what used to be the Lowmoor Inn at Kirkby-in-Ashfield. It's a huge place and must have cost a fair bit to heat and light to which can be added council tax, rent etc as others have mentioned. As it's closer to an industrial estate than a housing estate I'm not too surprised that it's closed.
RG, I agree entirely with your comment about strength-sapping images. A good lecture, of any variety, needs a careful and thoughtful edit. Less is more is generally my approach; leave 'em asking for more not feeling glad that you've finished - at long last!
On which note I shall finish.
Good luck to all your favourite sports teams over the weekend unless they happen to be Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Man City or Sheffield Steelers.
Rob
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